74.2% of the population of the United States is online, Which means that if you are looking to work with online sales it is wise to research and find the best keywords for your product or niche. There was close to 12 billion searches in the month of August 2008,and the number of internet users who use search engines has increased from one third to 49%, fast catching the daily use of email by internet users (which has comparably increased from 52% to 60% over the same period. The background Data from International currently indicates that there are nearly 1.7 billion people online worldwide with a penetration rate of 25.6%. This is an increase of 380.3% in the number of people online in 2000. All the following data can be found on the InternetWorldStats.com website. The largest increases in terms of internet use by geographic area since 2000 can be seen in the Middle East which had an increase of 1,648.2% since December 2000, followed by Africa with 1,392.4%. With a highly competitive and growing global market place makes it necessary for a company to understand what terminology, keywords and phrases their online target market is appropriating to search for their product, it is very important that the company conduct extensive keyword research to find the potential barriers and brand perceptions of the commodity that you are selling. Many company leaders and managers have their own perception of how they want their brand to be portrayed and ostensibly perceived online. A luxury second hand dealer, for example, may only want to include the words ‘pre-owned’ on their web site, and not ‘used’. The fact that thousands of people are searching for a used, and very few are searching for a preowned needs to be communicated. A company decides to sell Nike online, the market is pretty competitive, and the Nike brand itself is predominant. Depending on what a company sells or offers, overlooking the likelihood of the inclusion of geographical locations in the search query may be highly detrimental. The long tail is a type of statistical distribution where a high-frequency community is followed by a low-frequency which gradually “tails off”. The long tail in keyword research is an expansion of a basic core, generic, high volume keyword phrase to include numerous combinations and permutations of the keywords and their associated or relevant phrases. Individually they are unlikely to account for a great deal of searches, but when taken as a whole, can provide significant traffic. The long-tail is unlikely ever to exceed searches for a brand name if the brand name is reasonably well established, but the volume of converting traffic these terms can generate by nature of their specificity and relevance is worth investigating. A comprehensive long-tail keyword research can be a highly effective strategy, since people making long-tail searches are arguably further along in the buying cycle a significant amount of prior knowledge is needed in order for the searcher to know which words to use though, so conversion rates can be higher. Recent long-tail keyword research has found that long-tail searches often exhibit a higher conversion rate by up to 200% compared to short-tail or generic keywords, and can be extremely profitable for search engine marketers in terms of a lower cost and higher return on your investment time. The long-tail keywords are naturally more specific in nature than short-tail keywords, long-tail keywords present a great opportunity for search marketers to provide highly relevant ads which cater for the specific needs of highly-qualified searchers. If done skillfully, a search campaign with long-tail keywords can exhibit a considerably higher traffic rate than one with short-tail keywords. What’s more, since paid search click prices (CPCs) vary depending on a real-time supply and demand auction, long-tails can often be cheaper by up to 50% due to less competition. This Thorough keyword research consistently uncovers surprising topics in every study and presents you with numerically supported ratios that challenged your assumptions about your industry or product. Keyword research should not be undertaken as provisional. It is the foundation for all natural search engine optimization techniques as the keywords finally selected are based on search volume and the likely ability to compete should be included in some, if not all of the onpage elements, as well as in any anchor text backlinking to the relevant webpages: URL, Title tag, Metadata, Headers, Actual Content, Navigation links, Image names, Alt attributes are all places they should be used. Experts simply state that keyword research is the bedrock of successful web page optimization. Sources of traditional paid and free keyword research data and some tools are as follows: Yahoo Panama Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Tool, traffic estimator, Webmaster Tools; Google Suggest and Google Trends, MSN Keyword Forecast, Hitwise, Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, WordStream, SpyFu, Wordze and one of the easiest I have seen and used is PPC Web Spy. Check these all and you will find what you need to start your own online sales or affiliate company. Before you buy anything online, make sure you check this excellent free report on the use of keywords for your online affiliate or sales businessfree report You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.